The Stormbringer

by Isabel Cooper

  I’m still sorry.

  “I know.” A week before, or a hundred years, he’d have put his arms around Gerant. There was nothing to touch now, save for cold steel and hard stone, and that led to his next question. “How much do you perceive of…anything? I take it you can hear well enough.”

  True, and I have some sight independent of my bearer. Smell, taste—the hesitation was minute, but there—and touch are far more muted. Other than secondhand, they might as well not exist unless the sensations are very extreme. I might feel fire or acid, but nothing less.

  “Ah.”

  There’s this compensation: magic is far easier to sense in this state, and to grasp, or persuade, if one is going to be absurd about it. Amris smiled. That was an old debate, and one he’d sat through Gerant’s side of on a few evenings. You’ll notice perhaps that neither the ward last night nor the expansion just now required any chanting or incense from Darya?

  “I did,” Amris lied, and caught Gerant’s skepticism in his head. He admitted, “Or would have, if I hadn’t left half my mind a century back. Truly, it is impressive.”

  I had always wished for you as an audience.

  “I didn’t get any more knowledgeable while I was out of time, you know.”

  And you know that never mattered. I would rather show off for you than for the most learned mage in the world.

  “And I’d rather see you conjure fireworks than have anyone else summon me a castle,” Amris replied, his voice rough.

  It could be worse, Gerant said. Across the room, Darya finished sharpening her last knife and started tugging on her armor. When I agreed to this, I did think I was abandoning all hope of seeing you again, since you’d likely have moved on from Letar’s realm by the time I got there. In many ways, this is an unexpected gift for me.

  For Amris, it was the opposite, but he didn’t say that. Love, like so many other human ties, was built as much on the words you didn’t speak. He stared hard at Sitha’s carved face on the wall, slowly mastering himself enough to ask, “Did you survive long past”—past me came to his lips, but he had survived, in whatever new form this was—“that last battle?”

  Longer than I should have, and longer than better people. I was eighty-eight when I died, mostly from sheer old age. The priests of Letar could heal many things, but the body wore thin over the years, until the rust outweighed the rivets.

  “Good,” said Amris, and meant it. But the next thing he said was, “And if we’re to save the world from another such catastrophe, we’d best be going.”

  He couldn’t ask if Gerant had been happy without him. He hoped so, truly, but he couldn’t make himself say the words.

  Chapter 11

  The morning itself provided excuses enough for silence at first: wrestling himself into armor again, then breakfasting on more hardtack. They washed it down with water from Poram’s fountain, and Amris felt better for those few swallows than he’d done after many a feast in a lord’s hall. He said his blessing again before he drank, and bowed before they left.

  “If we had a week or two,” Darya said, glancing over her shoulder, “I’d clear out all the temples here. Get rid of the dust and undead and rats.”

  Unless people resettled the city, it would only be temporary.

  “The corpses wouldn’t come back. Besides, everything’s temporary. They deserve better.”

  “One day,” Amris said. “And one day people might return too. If all goes well.”

  You’ve doomed us all, said Gerant, as Darya hastily knocked four times on her bow, that being the only wood in reach.

  He laughed apologetically and yet was glad he’d said it—glad even for the mild heckling. After the morning, it cleared the air and lifted his own mood. With the curious vitality of the water had come a freshness to his mind, one that did not erase his sorrow but made it easier to see beyond and to take an interest in other matters.

  “You’re a well-matched pair,” he said. “Which of you chose the other?”

  “I picked Gerant for his looks,” said Darya, with a sly grin. “Silver-etched steel, Nerapis-style grooves and ornamental runes, square-cut flawless emerald, excellent balance—how could any girl resist?”

  And she was the most likely trainee her age—when I was ready for another bearer, that is to say—to understand the appeal of discovery. I had hoped she might develop an inclination toward more subtle methods than breaking things, killing other things, and stealing yet more things, yet here we are.

  “I’m not sure whether to be flattered or turn you into horseshoes.”

  Have mercy on the poor horse.

  Out of the temple square and back down the paths that Darya found, they picked up the thread of their journey again.

  The spell coiled about all three of them. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but for the first few hours, he was aware of it and thus of Darya in a way he hadn’t been of anyone before. She felt much like another hand, or the breastplate on his shoulders: a presence he knew well without thinking about it. Unconsciously, they began to walk in rhythm. Even when she went ahead to scout, Amris stayed an unvarying distance behind her.

  If I worked out how to expand this farther, Gerant said, perhaps it could be of use in larger groups.

  “Not that we’re generally in those. But if you can teach others, it could come in handy in war, from what I hear of that.” Darya glanced back at Amris.

  He ducked under a fallen roof beam, just low enough to have clipped his head otherwise. “The price might be too great to have it widespread. If soldiers feel it when one of them is injured or dies, they’d break easily, and if they didn’t break, they’d be distracted. For the officers, though… It might do us good in any number of ways.”

  It would make your decisions harder.

  “Such choices should be hard.”

  Darya, meanwhile, was frowning. “I hadn’t thought of that. Amris’s bruises don’t pain me so I’ve noticed, and I’m guessing it goes the other way around.” Amris nodded. “But would I feel it if he jumped off a cliff? And how strongly?”

  I’m not certain. I don’t believe the tie would be enough to kill you, or even leave you helpless if you greatly needed not to be, and I believe I could shield either of you from the worst of it, said Gerant. But I couldn’t swear to that, and I couldn’t speak at all in any more detail. It’s a fascinating question. Don’t test it.

  “So much for my plans.”

  “I will do my utmost,” Amris said, putting a hand to his heart, “to stay away from cliffs.”

  “Thank the gods we’re on the ground now.”

  They were, and that ground was less treacherous. As they left the center of the city, the buildings became smaller, and their destruction more complete: wood and clay did not stand up to time as marble and granite did, much less to storms and invasion. Some bits of oak and stone remained to clutter the road, and a few piles of broken bricks, but the streets were largely clear. On either side, roofless walls leaned against one another, and rough indentations showed where foundations had once stood.

  That was less foreboding than the huge buildings in the city’s center and their shadows, but it was also sadder. Even those who’d gotten out before Thyran’s army and all that followed had left their lives behind. Now there was nothing left of those, save for crumbling walls and faint marks in the earth.

  The old world, the world Amris had known, was gone. At the edge of its ruin, a wilderness rose up, thick and green and trackless.

  * * *

  Darya wanted to cheer the first time she saw the tree line from street level. Soon there wouldn’t be any more streets. Soon there wouldn’t be any more undead—she was fairly sure they didn’t venture outside the city—or unstable buildings or streets full of rubble. Normally she relished the chance to wander the fallen cities, but in this case, she couldn’t shake Klaishil’s dust from her heels qui
ckly enough.

  She settled for grinning and pointing. “There. And”—Darya glanced over her shoulder, calling the skyline back in her mind—“roughly the same place we came in.”

  Now to find the wasteland your horse has produced.

  “I’m sure Ironhide stopped eating sometime. And he’ll be rested, which is lucky for us,” she said, trying not to eye Amris and his armor too obviously.

  “How far have we to go before Oakford?”

  “Thirty miles. Two days, more or less, given the ground.” Two days before she could tell the fort’s commander about the situation, send messages to the Adeptas and, well, not turn it over to them exactly—because Darya didn’t think she could turn over the possible end of the world—but not be one of only three people who knew of it. More experienced tacticians would make decisions. People with big armies would send them. She’d do her part, and know her part.

  When she stepped into the shade of the forest, the world felt steadier beneath her, and far more familiar. The woods hadn’t produced threats from the past or companions whose good looks she couldn’t think about. Under the trees, she hadn’t vicariously remembered mobs and fire and blood on the snow.

  Home, she thought, or at least getting closer.

  At first, when Darya peered into the forest and didn’t see the dappled-gray hide of her gelding, she thought impatience had made her misremember how close to the city she’d left him. Then, dangling from a large pine tree, she saw the loose ends of her picket line. She started swearing, but only in her mind. As silently as possible, she drew her sword.

  No big cat leaped down as she approached the tree, Amris at her side. No monster sprang from the shadows, and Darya saw no motion anywhere save that of small harmless creatures.

  But below the tree, and on the ground all around it, the grass was trodden down—not as a single horse would crush it by grazing, but by more beasts with more purpose—and when Darya reached for her rope, she saw that it had been neatly cut.

  The pulse in her throat began to pound. She knelt and examined the tracks: there were sets from horses and from longer creatures with ten legs. All led out along the path she’d originally come on—toward Oakford.

  She and Amris might not be ahead of the threat after all.

  Part II

  The barbarians of the north were the first to fall to Thyran and his god. Some went to him willingly, lured by the promises of power or plunder. Others bowed to superior force. Few stood against his allies, and those that did died, or worse, in large part. A handful survived to flee south with warnings. We mostly ignored them. That is our shame, and it was our undoing.

  —The Letters of Farathen

  Call: What are the enemies of mortals?

  Response: The dead that walk. The Twisted, once humans and once beasts. The mortal servants of Gizath, who would reorder the world in his name.

  Call: How may they be fought?

  Response: With fire, with magic, with faith, with steel. Most of all with caution and will.

  —The Catechism of Letar’s Blades, Part III, Revised

  Chapter 12

  “Three horses, plus Ironhide,” she said, straightening up and turning to Amris. “Two big beasts, ten legs each. Do you know those? I’ve never seen that sort of thing with raiders, or heard of them either.”

  “Korvin,” he said, and his mouth tightened. Darya heard the next word in advance, though she was praying inwardly not to. “A kind of Twisted. Scouts ride them. Probably one on each, though they can carry two. Human blood at close range excites the creatures too much for even the twistedmen who ride them to control them, and they don’t carry deadweight well. Raiders would find them of little use.”

  “Scouts,” Darya repeated. “Oh.”

  He could be wrong. Korvin could have changed since his time. Even if they were scouts, they could be from a small band. The Order and the various militant priesthoods had suspected, ever since the storms had died down enough for people to start suspecting things at all, that a few of Thyran’s lieutenants had survived and gathered their own little fiefdoms, out where no mortal ventured. The Twisted, korvin and twistedmen both, could have come from one of them.

  That would have been a hell of a coincidence.

  “In the histories,” she said, “Thyran wasn’t much for simply getting the lay of the land when he sent his forces out, was he? And if he’s been around for a month or two, he’d have been able to do that already, right?”

  Amris sympathized, she felt, but he didn’t waste time trying to soften his answer. “No, I fear, and yes. He may have changed since he’s awakened, but in my day, the korvin riders always went in advance of his army, but never very far.”

  The muscles just below Darya’s windpipe clamped down, and her own breath echoed like the sea in her ears. She looked back at the tracks, using facts to build a wall between her and panic. None of the facts were reassuring, but concentrating on them broke the cycle of oh shit oh gods oh no we’re dead oh shit oh gods oh no that kept wanting to repeat at the back of her mind.

  She’d known it had been bad. She’d thought they’d have time.

  Thyran probably hadn’t had a chance to raise all the forces he’d ended up with a hundred years back. He’d probably just gotten a bunch of his old chief minions to bring their separate packs together. It wasn’t as though the mortal lands could field as many soldiers as they once had either. Oakford sure as hell didn’t have more than a hundred, if that, the vast majority of them normal humans with maybe a year of actual fighting under their belts—and that was where any army going south would have to strike first.

  “They’re not long ahead of us,” she said, glancing back at the tracks. Her voice was flat. Everything was flat. The world seemed to have lost a dimension in the last few moments. “Five, six hours. If I hadn’t decided to sleep—”

  If we’d known then what we know now, we’d be gods, or prophets at any rate, and there are reasons most mortals don’t have such gifts, Gerant cut in sharply.

  Amris nodded. “He’s right, as he always was when he said as much to me.” He didn’t touch her, but stepped closer, and the earth became more solid beneath Darya’s feet. His voice, low and calm, with the words slower and more lilting than Darya was used to hearing from modern speakers, smoothed the worst of the guilt out of her mind. “And consider—if we’d come earlier, we’d likely have stumbled into at least five of Thyran’s troops and their mounts, which were trained for war when I fought them. I think well of your skill, Sentinel, and likely too well of my own, but I suspect we’d have fared ill and left none to bring back warning.”

  “Point to you both,” said Darya. “You know his armies. How far behind the scouts is the main force likely to be?”

  “From what I recall, and given the land, I’d think three or four days at least. More, should he plan to attack in any great strength.”

  “All right.” She thought of the terrain herself, planning for horses because she didn’t know how the korvin coped with mole holes and tree roots, and made some quick calculations. “We can push ourselves and make it back in two, maybe three.”

  “Give it three, with some time for sleep and eating,” said Amris. “The problem with scouts is that they’re all too apt to return to their forces.”

  “I should’ve thought of that,” said Darya, because it beat Oh, good, and I didn’t think this could get any worse.

  * * *

  There wasn’t much left of the road from Klaishil, just a flatter space between two hills where wide stones occasionally interjected themselves among the grass and the shrubs. Once in a while, four or five of those stones still lay side by side. Mostly, a traveler would have had to know in advance that the road was there.

  Still, Darya took herself and Amris off it, into the shrubs and trees a few feet away where the hills began to rise. The going was a little slower, but not mu
ch with her gift, and Amris’s point about scouts returning stuck in her mind. The tracks had led back along the old road. Thus, she knew what might be there. Thus, she avoided it.

  Although he had no gift for finding safe routes, was considerably larger than Darya, and was wearing far heavier armor, Amris didn’t complain about the decision or even question it. He walked when she walked, far enough behind to let her mark the trail but close enough to be at hand in case trouble did strike, stopped to eat or drink when she did, and kept the same silence. He made more noise when walking, but that wasn’t to be helped.

  Darya picked up a stone shortly after they started walking—round and dark, it fit neatly into her palm, and had a pleasant weight to it. She carried it for two or three hours, until movement out of the corner of her eye revealed a rabbit sitting up between two of the trees. Then she glanced, cocked back an arm, and threw.

  It was a good hit. “Hold here a moment,” she said to Amris—speaking softly, as whispers carried farther—and went to grab the body before another creature could.

  You’ve impressed him, said Gerant.

  “I’ve gotten us dinner,” Darya muttered, “which will keep us in better form to fight if we need to.” Nonetheless, hearing it made her smile.

  It was a good thing she usually worked alone, she thought. When she had a partner, especially a handsome one, even a handsome and off-limits one, she was far too apt to show off.

  Bending to pick their future dinner up, she suddenly stopped. Her smile vanished. A few feet beyond where the rabbit had fallen, a path of blackened ferns and gray brambles slashed through the green and brown underbrush.

  Shit, she thought.

  She said nothing aloud, but straightened up, drew Gerant, and started backing away toward Amris.

  Beyond her, like echoes in the forest, many legs skittered closer.